#this would b so creepy.... like horror movie material but when I unlocked it i was laughing sm......

[baiqilovemail]

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[fanslabyrinth]

Split

The bar was set low when I walked into Split - another gap in my self-taught cinema-guy journey is that the only M. Night Shyamalan experience I’ve had is fast-forwarding my way through The Last Airbender, trying to remember that there is good in the world. Alas, every new film deserves the benefit of the doubt. Split is the best possible sum of its parts. It is a fun and thorough B-grade horror movie, which is a disservice to James McAvoy, who soars above Shyamalan’s more humble material.

three out of five

The official logline of Split claims that Kevin (McAvoy) has 23 distinct and diagnosed personalities that inhabit him - great starting point, but we only get substantial portions of about seven of these on the screen, with only brief glimpses of a few more. This is still a mean feat for a performer and a narrative, mind you, but I felt gipped; I was promised 23, dammit! Anyway, there we have it - poor Kevin hasn’t had a look in at controlling his own consciousness, the space taken up by other dominating voices ranging vastly in identity. Dissociative Identity Disorder is thought to come about as a mental coping mechanism to severe trauma, but Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), with Kevin as a patient, has the polarising opinion that in some cases these seperate identities have unlocked pathways in the brain that create such disparities as to appear supernatural. One case, for example, has seen a blind patient have an alter who had regained their sight.

So Dr. Fletcher is fighting the good fight for misfits like Kevin and co., unaware that one of Kevin’s alters, *Dennis*, is a very bad man and has abducted and imprisoned three teenage girls in his damp labyrinth of a dungeon. With empathy for her patient, however, she can feel something is amiss - Kevin’s *Barry* has been sending her emails pleading for help, only to appear in her office as calmed down and apologetic. My favourite scene, in fact, is with Shyamalan’s cameo as a tech guy, who shows Dr. Fletcher the security footage of her building - as *Barry* leaves, she poses that it isn’t *Barry* at all, and that pesky *Dennis* is up to something. “Great!!,” I thought - a murder mystery with a Miss Marple-esque hero chasing down her criminal in the stage of a single mind! That train of thought did not last long in Split, which ultimately offered a far more conventional outing, but it gave me a glimpse of something greater, something more imaginative.

On his path to greater ambition Shyamalan might start with ditching the tropes of this forever abused genre - the fumbling for the keys, the scratching for weapons, the goddamn irresponsible snooping around a suspicious property without a police escort! Or ditching the cliched, semi-nude highschool girl victims - the kind who seem like they’ve learnt how to act from watching bad horror movies themselves. The one least likely to die early is Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), who looks like a creepier Kendal Jenner - she is mysterious and awkward with flashbacks to past trauma, mostly communicated through severe closeups. One of Kevin’s alters is *Hedwig*, a nine-year old with a compulsion to accidentally reveal too much to Casey, hampered by his budding adolescence - Casey sees Hedwig as a bid for freedom, easy to manipulate and exploit. “Great!!!,” I thought, once more - a morally questionable and potentially tragic cat-and-mouse relationship between two young characters who are arguably both being held captive. Another train of thought that bites the dust. Shyamalan instead focusses his attention on how the alters drop hints of the arrival of a 24th identity - a beast. Time ticks away for the girls, who know they have to escape before they have to come face-to-face with what the beast might be. True to horror traditions, this line of narrative questioning creates some good fun in our imaginations along the way, only to not quite live up to the hype come the climax.

But all the while McAvoy is giving his absolute hardest to a truly plum role. He creates each alter with bold strokes that suits Shyamalan’s context, but he also imbues each one with recognisable humanity. We could know each one of these alters, whether they’re unremarkable or overtly creepy. As the gimmick to separate Split from any number of other horror movies that doesn’t manage to receive great hype, he delivers a performance that is exciting and unexpected. If only the film had altogether been as satisfying.

Sidenote - I am told that an Easter Egg at the start of the end credits apparently puts Split into a slightly different context than we might have thought. There is a prerequisite, though - you have to be versed in the way of the Shymalan. As one who is not so wise, I would love to hear of anyone’s takes of what that little footnote might possibly mean and how it could impact the reading of Split.